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Published: Mon, 5 Dec 2016

A company may have productive behavior and counterproductive behavior in within the employees. Counterproductive behavior can be defined as employee behavior that goes against the goals of an organization. (Paul R. Sackett; Christopher M. Berry; Shelly A. Wiemann; Roxanne M. Laczo, (2006) or intended to have a detrimental effect on organization and their member. Antisocial behavior (Giacolone & Greenberg, 1997), deviance and organization aggression (Bennet & Robinson, 2000) also referred as counterproductive behavior by various author and researcher. According to the definition above, employees who make the company more difficult to achieve its goal is counterproductively. . For example, except for achieve high profitability a company have others goals also, high level of customer service, harmonies working environment etc. There are many roots cause that lead to the counterproductive behaviors, for example, employee turnover, attendance issues, or lack of training. It depends on the company how to identify the cause of the counterproductive behaviors and work out with solutions.

Other than that behavior is also define as the aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation. Counterproductive behavior can be intentional or unintentional. Fox, S. and Spector, P.E. proposed that that a person-by-environment interaction can be utilized to explain a variety of counter-productive behaviors. Intentional, an employee intentionally steal asset from the employers for personal benefit or gain. On the other hand an employee who receives insufficient training and performs badly in job that causes the company hard to achieve its goal is unintentional.

The common counterproductive behavior that happen in a company are ineffective job performance, absenteeism, job turnover, theft (Paul E. Specto) There are others minor counterproductive occur within employees counterproductive behavior have also been investigated including violence, substance use, and sexual harassment. It is hardly to detect job inefficiency within a company, and is much more difficult to diagnose the cause of prevent, or resolve. Most counterproductive behavior are “immature” behavior, although those people who display counterproductive behavior are intelligent and competent, but their act show that they are not considering the consequences and fall back on old patterns.

Nowadays the numbers of graduated students or educated workers that join into the sector of white-collar are rapidly increasing. The term white-collar worker refers to a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales coordination tasks (Wikipedia) and is come out from Upton Sinclair, an American writer in the year 1930s. Counterproductive behaviors within the white-collar sector may lead to white-collar crime. White collar crime- as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (Edwin Sutherland, 1939) IHYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading”nsider trading, embezzlementHYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud” fraud, bribery, computer crime, money laundering, forgery copyright infringement, and identity theft white-collar employees are easy to perform such action, therefore white-collar crime are overlap with corporate crime. The criminal action by white-collar will bring not only profitability to the company, other than that the company might facing liability, reputation and image of the company also affected.

From the above definition, there are many formed of counterproductive behavior in a company. Counterproductive behavior may cause loss in company profit, bring negative image to the company and a company will have difficulty to achieve its goals. Counterproductive behaviors that occur among white-collar have the percentage that lead to white-collar criminal.

1.2 Problem Statement

Due to globalization, business competitions become more intense. Every company has to make sure that they will not be eliminated by others competitors. Except to having a wealthy asset and good policy, employees are need so company can operate well. Each company has its own requirement for employees. Nowadays, company demand of the graduated students or educated employees is increasing. Problem also occur when the employees do not satisfied with their working environment, some of their actions will harm the benefit of the company and cause the company hard to achieve its goals. On the other hand, most counterproductive behaviors research are focusing on individual-level behavior, they ignore the work group, or a higher of organization.

Counterproductive behavior brings series of problems to the company. Annual losses that cause by counterproductive behaviors up to 40 billion (Jones, 1981, Online) and it may be cause 20% to 30% of the business bankruptcies (Meinsma, 1985, Online). Although it is hard to calculate the losses of the counterproductive behaviors that brings to company, estimated $28 billion annually lost as a result of on-the-job substance abuse (Jones & Wuebker, 1985, Online) and 50 hours per employee per year lost from unauthorized extensions of work breaks (Jones, 1983, Online).

Regarding to the company confidential, some counterproductive behavior may reveal the company’s confidential data to the competitors. Rival make take advance on the data and take over the company. Besides that, employees who often absent from work, reduce the efficiency of their work group, that may affect the others department in the company. According U.S Department of Labor, public sector occupation, health, office and education have the highest absenteeism rate. In a company or organization, people eager to earn the respect and recognize by his or her colleague, most happen in new employ employees, that they been ignore by seniors. In order to get attention, they might act to counter the progress or opinion of others, this will hold the progress of the meeting even a project.

The research designed to find out the personal choices of the employees regard to the ethical behavior in them and the influence of the organization toward individual employees about their counterproductive behaviors.

1.3Research Question

Which counterproductive behaviors that are common occur in the company and the reason?

Does the working environment affect the counterproductive behaviors?

Does the moral awareness within employees affect the behaviors?

Do white-collar satisfied with current working environment and how is the way to improve?

1.4 Objective of Study

The main objective of this research is to identify the reason of counterproductive behavior within employees and so the higher management can come out with the suitable solutions. Research has targeted few behaviors that are common in happen in counterproductive behavior within employees. From those behaviors, can figure out the reasons why the employees having such behavior and can reinforce all the weakness which been asked in my questionnaire so that we can figure out the solution to counterproductive behaviors.

The research project also will attain the following objectives:

To identify and analyze the factors counterproductive behavior.

To analyze the ways to improve and reinforce the weakness of current solution of the counterproductive behavior.

To determine the relationship between moral awareness and counterproductive behaviors.

To identify the relationship between working environment and counterproductive behaviors.

1.5 Significance of Study

Different level of management will need different kind of information to improve and comes out with better solution. There are several of behaviors in counterproductive behaviors as we mention in the introduction, each have its own reason and characteristics. The research has point out the common behaviors in a company and also with the reason. The higher management of the company can use the study and as a reference to come out with a solution and decrease the counterproductive behavior in the company. This research may show the moral value in the employees themselves, and the expected working

From the study, it also helps some researcher when they are doing the counterproductive behavior research. They can use the research as the reading material to get more information about counterproductive behavior.

1.6 Justification of Research

The research in the topic of Counterproductive Behavior can benefit the higher management of the company to identify the problem and work out with solutions. Although each company have their own assessment system, but most assessment system only focus on the outcomes of each employees. Sometimes the system ignores the personal behavior of the employees.

Through the research, the reason of each counterproductive behavior occurs in employees will be reveal and the higher management can have a clear picture about counterproductive behavior in the company. Other than that, from the research higher management can tackle the root cause and propose a better solution, to develop more efficient system.

1.6 Limitation of study

During the research, a sample of 200 will be taken from white-collar employees. The questionnaire will be distributed to them. Before that, it requires to gain permission to do the survey within the company. Application of permission to do the survey in company will consume sometimes, it might delay the research progress. Information that need for research, except from the university’s online data base, some of the online journals require membership and it need to pay.

The study brings more understanding about the reasons why employees have such behaviors. In addition, it also brings some development, improvement and reinforcement for higher management a better understanding of the employees’ behaviors and can work out with better solutions.

1.7 Methodology

This study will undertake using multiple regressions with dummy variable model. The research information will get through primary data methods which include interview, observation, survey and questionnaire. After the data and information collected, this research will use analysis of quantitative data to analysis the data.

Interview – Interview will be conduct to the employees of the selected company, all the information that obtain from interview will be use as reference materials for further research.

Observation – the study will observe the company working environment, a friendly and good working environment will motivate employees vice versa.

Survey and questionnaire – will give out questionnaire to the employees in the company and the data collected will be confidential.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

Literature review is a necessary preliminary to defining the aim, unless a pilot study has been done before. The review should lead naturally and logically into the aim and hypotheses. The literature reviews is to help the reader to understand the research, show that other researchers deem the area important, and demonstrate that the author has a sufficiently deep and wide knowledge of what has been published ( or, sometimes, ,not published) in the area. Any relevant publications of the author should be cited. Indeed, if time permits the submission of a thesis should be preceded by at least one of the author’s publications, the substance of which can be incorporated into the thesis, if appropriate. Above all, a literature review is not a summary; it is critical analysis of the relevant literature in order, in general, to establish the following:

The current state of knowledge in the chosen area including research methods used and emphasizing important results and conclusion of other researchers provided that are relevant.

The key ideas, variables, factors and concepts of the area and the relationship between them. Any apparent lack of relationship s and whether existing work can be built upon.

The social significance of the lacunae, if any.

Whether previous studies can be replicated with different populations to demonstrate cross – cultural differences.

This chapter will focus on the counterproductive behavior in the company.

2.2 Definition of Counterproductive Behavior

Counter mean indicating opposition or resistance. Productive mean capable of producing something or yielding a good or useful result. Counterproductive is a situation that prevents a group, organization, or other collective entities from performing or accomplishing its originally stated function. This condition stems from multiple causes. Each group dynamic is unique and often a group may suffer from more than one of the causes (Wikipedia) Behavior, aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation. Counterproductive behaviors consist of wide range of employees’ negative action and behavior that may harm the company profitability and goals. The most common researched that done by scholars or researchers are job performance, absenteeism, job turnover and theft.

Companies suffer loss due to employees’ counterproductive behaviors. Currently there are no certain measurement that can calculate the loss that the counterproductive behaviors bring to the company, all form of data are in estimation or depend on the profit and loss of the company. Many companies have research the counterproductive behaviors so they can come out with a system that can avoid such behaviors occur in the company. Most research that had been done are focus on individual behaviors.

2.3 Common Counterproductive Behaviors

There are many types of counterproductive behaviors; the study will focus on the behaviors that commonly occur within the employees.

2.3.1 Ineffective Job Performance

Campbell describes job performance as an individual level variable (Wikipedia).Outcome that an individual done for company will be measure as the job performance. Ineffective job performance means the result or outcomes of the employees does not satisfied, not efficiency, does not reach the goal of the job. There are several reasons that ineffective job performance occur. Not satisfied with the company policy, some employees feels that the company policies are too harsh or requirement of achievement for each employees are too high, they do their work perfunctory as the silent protest to the company.

2.3.2 Absenteeism

Absenteeism is the term generally used to refer to unscheduled employee absences from the workplace (Answer.com). There are many causes of absenteeism, illness or family issues. Other than that, absenteeism of employees may also because poor working environment and employees not committed to their works. If absenteeism occurs often in a company, it will bring impact to the business operation and also its profitability.

A research conducted by Commerce Clearing House Inc. (CCH Inc.) found that absenteeism cost small businesses, at that time, $62,636 a year, on average, in lost productivity, sick time, and replacement costs. There are several factor that relevance to absenteeism are cited by The SOHO Guidebook:

Lost productivity of the absent employee

Overtime for other employees to fill in

Decreased overall productivity of those employees

Any temporary help costs incurred

Possible loss of business or dissatisfied customers

Problems with employee morale

(The SOHO Guidebook, Answer.com, Online)

2.3.3 Job Turnover

In a human resources context, turnover or labor turnover is the rate at which an employer gains and losses employees (Dr. Lorenzo C. Lorenzo, Personnel & Industrial Relations, Online). Job turnover is costly to the company. If a job turnover occurs, company has to hire new employees and it will cost the company time and also costly. Besides that, company has to provide training to new employees. It will cost company in hire trainers, preparing training materials. It may take up to few weeks for the new employees manage to handle their job, therefore the efficiency of works outcome will decrease. If in a shortage of manpower, company force to hire temporally workers and their wages are count hourly. Although it may cope the company problems, but in long term, company will suffer high labor cost. Employees job turnover can be divide to two types, voluntary and involuntary (Dr. Lorenzo C. Lorenzo, Personnel & Industrial Relations, Online). Involuntary job turnover employees might because of long term sickness, death or moving to overseas. Voluntary job turnover employees might not satisfied with the company compensation and having an unhappy working environment.

2.3.4 Theft

Theft means the act of taking something from someone unlawfully (WorldNetWeb). In the research, theft related to stealing of company assets for own benefit or to damage the company. Stealing often happen in the office, where employees take the stationary provided by company back home for their own. Although is just a small stapler, pen, paper or envelope, taking the work-related items from work, stealing is stealing no matter how small or low cost the items is. Steal from company and it is costly.

Criminologist Donald R. Cressey (1950s) introduced the theory of the “fraud triangle.” In the fraud triangle there are three factors that lead to an employee committing fraud.

Figure 1 Fraud Triangle by Donald R. Cressey (1950s)

2.3.5 Accident

An accident is a specific, unidentifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects (Wikipedia). According to Wikipedia, an accident at work is defined as an external, sudden, unexpected, unintended, during the execution of work or arising out of it, which may lead to an industrial injury and /or fatality and /or material and /or environmental damages. Accident at work will cost company to pay large amount of compensation to the employees. There are also some researches on the work place accident, result show that most work place accident is cause by younger employees. Young employees are more easy distract by other things, they hardly to concentrate in their work.

2.4 Definition of White-Collar

White-collar, mean a person who educated or professional who performed office work and sales coordination tasks. Demands for white-collar employees are increasing as many companies are establishing in the business world. From the customers service counter to the management level, all are categorized as white-collar workers, different from blue collar workers that performed manual labor.

Changes from time to time, now employees are more flexible in choosing their working dress code (etc. t-shirt, jean). So not all the white-collar workers must wear the traditional dress code, white shirt and tie.

2.5 Factor of Counterproductive Behaviors

Counterproductive behaviors cause a company to suffer loss annually where the amount of loss are unable to measure or calculate, because currently don’t have a measurement that use to measure the loss that cause by counterproductive behaviors. Companies invest lots of budget to research and to held training for employees to avoid the counterproductive behaviors occur in employees.

A comfortable working environment will motivate employees and increase the job performance, but if the employees often expose in the dangerous working environment it will bring negative effect to the company. The explosion of a plastic factory in Nanking at July 28 causes 13deaths in this incident. According to the State Administration of Work Safety, they suspect that the incident happens because of illegal subcontracting and they do not meet the safety standard. If an individual expose in danger working environment, chance for that person to quit the job surely will increase, this will increase the job turnover rate.

Besides that, dissatisfaction of employees toward company’s policy and welfare are common issue that can found in every company. For example, pay cut causes the stealing in the company increase. Employees do not satisfied with the company’s decision to cut their salary, they steal company’s assets or even sale the company confidential document to other rivals. Non transparent procedures, close-door decision, above action will let the employees feel that they are not gain any respect from the company. It is not difficult for us to found work barriers inside a company, ages, race, sex and also culture. Employees cannot cooperate with each other because barriers exist between; lack of communication will cause the information that should be passing on time delay.

There are also personal issues that cause the counterproductive behaviors occur. Employees who having family matters bring their emotion to work place, it will affect not only his or her job performance and other colleague.

2.6 Self-Esteem

Self esteem is a confidence in our ability to think, to cope with the basic challenges of life and confidence in our right to be successful and happy (Nathaniel Branden, Online). Abraham Maslow in his hierarchy of needs, self-esteem is included. According to Abraham Malow, there are two different types of self esteem: the need for respect from others and the need for self-respect, or inner self-esteem (Maslow A. H. (1987). Respects from other like recognition, status are fragile and easy to loss. People must have strong inner self esteem before they can ready to receive respect from others.

Figure 2 show the hierarchy of needs (Source: http://web.utk.edu/~gwynne/maslow.HTM)

Self esteem sometimes refer as self-love or self-confidence, it depend on an individual personality and the confidence in them, how they value themselves, how they facing the challenge. Self esteem can be divided into two categories, high self esteem and low self esteem. People with high esteem always have positive view in life, or we call optimistic. High and low self esteem can be quantified in more detail by Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965) which develops by Moris Rosenberg, other than that Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (1967/1981) also can be use to quantify high and low self esteem.

A high self esteem people firstly must strong in physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Other than that, an individual need to maintain his emotional balance and clear of thought. In other word, an individual have a good emotional quotient, he or she can do the correct decision when situation out of control. High self esteem people must have courage to admit the mistake he or she make and able to learn from mistake. Beside that an individual have to plan and responsible for their daily life. Individual need to tolerate with others people, manage to accept others opinion and suggestion. Clear and understand about self strength and weakness, continuous self improvement. Last but not less, self confidence, respect and acceptance.

People who are low self esteem always blame and critics themselves, they are faultfinding so they can blame or shame others; people who are low self esteem find themselves difficult to forgive others and their own. They not responsible for their own life, they give others to make decision for them, but if the result outcomes are not their liking, they will feel they are the victim of your decision. Low self esteem people either they fear to change they willing to remain as usual then take any risk or dangerous to change, nor too much change they make, and their decision often is dangerous and high risk. They have the negative view of life and denied the reality of the life. Sometimes they react too much to others or no emotion at all. Low self esteem people are hard to interact with others, it is hard to reach an agreement with such people as they stand still on their “willing” and not accept others opinion. They would like to compare themselves with the people that are superior then them.

2.7 Agreeableness

Agreeableness is a tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations (Wikipedia). People who agreeableness is more concern in cooperative and social harmony as define in the big five major dimension (Graziano, W.G., & Eisenberg, N. (1997). High agreeableness people are generous, easy to truce people, helpful and kind. They think that the harmony of the organization are important than self interest. Beside that they have an optimistic view of life, and they tend to believe people are trust worthy, honest and kind. Contrary people scoring low agreeableness concern about their own interest above others. They less concern with others well-being, they think that others things are none of their business, therefore they less likely to help others. They always suspicious about others people motives, it make them unfriendly to others people in the society. They are more likely to compete with others than cooperate. Study found that people who high in agreeableness are optimist to life also. They manage to control their negative emotion in the conflict situation.

2.8 Procedural Justice

Procedural justice is a psychological concept that refers to individual perceptions of the fairness of procedures that are used to make decisions (Richard A. Posthuma, 2003). Procedural justice is designed to ensure that company can have efficiency of information processing and discovering so higher management can make just and wise decision. Beside that it enhances the fairness of information using by any company employees. Procedural justice are important to protect the privacy of information, with a fair procedures, third party cannot steal information from the company. Procedural justice makes sure the outcomes of the decision fair, employees will feel respected and easier to accept the outcomes even though the result are not their expected (Morton Deutsch,2000).

To make the procedural justice fair, few steps have to follow. First, differentiate the personal identity with the mechanism of the department itself. All cases have to treat alike, no first priority is given to anyone, and cases treat according to department and the importance of the cases. For those who in-charge the procedures must be equitable and neutral, no interest conflict are involve. Person in charge should treat people who involve in the procedures fair and just, they need to take the viewpoints and interest of third parties into account. The decision must be unbiased so the conclusion is fair and accurate. For those who involve in the decision process should have a representative in the process. Representative will voice out the opinion and make sure the interests of third party are protected. Other than that, having representative inside the decision process will make other people trust and more confidence in the decision process. Another advantage is, it can help weaker parties so their voice can be heard. Finally, the decision that make can be transparent and decision can be make openly without any fraud.

2.9 Distributive Justice

Arrangement where goods or services are apportioned by an authority (a government agency, for example) on the basis of a commonly accepted standard, such as the number of hours worked by an individual (BusinessDictionary.com). Distributive principal can have many forms, to an individual, in which group and amount and types of distribution. Allocation of goods means the resources that are going to give out. Resource in the society is scarce, issues arise when the allocation of resource. Common think that resource should be distribute fairly so everyone can get enough resource. But how the resource can be distributed?

According to John Rawl’s Difference Principal, allocation of resource can be inequality if when the resource that distribute inequality benefit the low level of society. Some think that Rawl’s principle are not economic sensitive, people deserve to get for resource that equivalent to their work. In order to distribute the resource in fair, we need to consider about Equality, Equity, and Need of the society (Robert T. Buttram, Robert Folger, and B.H. Sheppard, 1995). Equality in the distribution of resource means everyone have the same amount of goods, resource will be distribute equally. Thus each level of society have different needs, so it will result in unequal outcomes. (Example: In a company each department receive same annual budget, Marketing Department need large budget for their advertisement, but Logistic Department useless annual budget. Since both department receive same budget, but Marketing Department are limit because lack of budget, where else Logistic Department not necessary to have that amount of budget) Proceed to next equity, resource are distribute according to the contribution of each individual. People who make great achievement and contribute in their group deserve to receive more. In economic system, everyone have equal opportunity to compete to get more benefits. Wealth or goods are distributed to who have much more competitive power in economic system. Other than that, resource can be distributed according to needs. Resource will be distributed to those who need more.

2.10 Organizational Ethic

An individual characteristic affect his or her ethical decision making in a company, other than that the working environment also will affect the ethical behaviors of the employees. Each employee have their own ethical value points of view that might not same as company. An organization’s ethical context (the ethical culture and ethical climate of the business) assists both managers and employees alike to understand what behavior is and is not appropriate, what is expected of them and how to answer the question ‘What should I do whenâ€¦?” (Stan Walkowiak, June Smith, Online, 2006) Each employees in the company have their role to play in the company to keep the company continue function, management level play an important role on the ethical context as a model to the employees under them.

Climate Ethics or Climate Justice is a new and growing area of research that focuses on the ethical dimensions of climate change (Wikipedia) Ethical climate equivalent to the view and concept of the employees to the work environment and their point of views in company decision making. Ackerman and Bauer study the relation between climate ethic and employees behaviors in an organization. Many arguments about the climate ethic that people are interest based being, people not care about the ethical behavior, so ethical behavior should be ignore and should only focus on personal interest in the legislation of Charles Redding , Ethics and Communication in Organizational Contexts: Moving from the Fringe to the Center (1996)climate ethic. Most scholars in the field of organization communication ethic focus only in the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization overlook the right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable ( Charles Redding , Ethics and Communication in Organizational Contexts: Moving from the Fringe to the Center (1996)

2.11 Employment test

Several tests have been developed to assist company in recruitment. The test is to predict the percentage of the job candidate involve in counterproductive behaviors. The test can help the employers in recruitment decision. Employment test include multiple questions and self report format. Employment test include integrity or honesty tests, drug-and-alcohol tests, violence tests, and stress-tolerance tests. Many private sector company starts to use the employment test for their employees recruitment, while the use of polygrap

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